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The “Marine Protected Area Tool Hub” is an educational platform that is practitioner-focused at every level and developed to help you with your personalised challenges.

The National Environment Service worked closely with family representatives of the Takitumu Conservation Area, to submit an assessment application that will gave the TCA official international recognition as an Other Effective area-based Conservation Measure (OECM). All documents relevant to the submission process will be stored here, including resources on the TCA, which are referred to in the assessment form.The TCA was launched as the Cook Islands' first OECM on International Biodiversity Day 2024 (22 May 2024)

Carondelet is a remote seamount in the Phoenix Islands of the Republic of Kiribati. Earlier expeditions of the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) were not able to survey the seamount due to challenging ocean conditions. In 2015, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Kiribati Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resource Development conducted surveys around the shallow habitats (<30 m) of the seamount to characterize coral reef fish and benthic communities.

The management plan describes the priority strategies for the upland areas of the Lake Lanoto'o National Park that will nest maintain and improve the key conservation values in these areas by reducing the impact of threats including from climate change. 

Full Document (Pdf)

This report was commissioned by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) to raise awareness and understanding of the tools available to evaluate Protected Area Management Effectiveness (PAME); to provide case studies from the region on PAME assessment; and to help inform decision-making when choosing tools and planning assessments.

Community-based approaches to conservation and natural resource management are considered essential to meeting global conservation targets. Despite widespread adoption, there is little understanding about successful and unsuccessful community-based practices because of the challenges of designing robust evaluations to estimate impacts and analyse the underlying mechanisms to impact. Here we present findings from a national scale evaluation of the ‘locally managed marine areas’ network in Fiji, a marine community-based management initiative.

The Aleipata group of offshore islands have been identified as one of eight Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) in Samoa. They are located at the south-eastern end of Upolu Island at 14o3’447.28”S, 171o25’23.84”W (Nu’utele) and 14o4’22.11”S and 171o24’36.17”W (Nu’ulua) offshore. This project updates population estimates and establish baseline data and information on breeding seabirds of the Aleipata offshore islands and investigate the feasibility of future tracking studies of some species.

Conservation can best be achieved when conservation values are part of the mainstream
of society, when they “become part of everyone’s decisions” including government, private
enterprise and the community as a whole. This was recognized by the more than 320
participants from Pacific island governments, Pacific and international organizations and
community groups when they met in Rarotonga, Cook Islands in July 2002 for the 7th

The CKI OECM Workshop Report consolidates the discussions, outcomes, recommendations and next steps following the Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures Workshop, hosted by the National Environment Service, in partnership with Secretariat of Pacific Regional Environment Program and the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre, on the 24th - 25th January 2023 in Rarotonga, Cook Islands.  

Even optimistic climate scenarios predict catastrophic consequences for coral reef ecosystems by 2100. Understanding how reef connectivity, biodiversity and resilience are shaped by climate variability would improve chances to establish sustainable management practices. In this regard, ecoregionalization and connectivity are pivotal to designating effective marine protected areas.